A use of lasers for ablating or thermally destroying diseased tissue is known and at time preferred, primarily due to the potential for precise local effect with minimal collateral damage. In practice, however, laser therapy has been less than perfect for use in certain clinical applications, such as the treatment of early epithelial cancers and their precursors. One of the problems with laser therapy for these applications has been the inability to accurately control and guide the treatment depth, resulting in either disease recurrence due to incomplete therapy or complications associated with overly aggressive treatment.
Epithelial Cancer: Diagnosis and Treatment
Methods and techniques for identifying and treating cancer at an early stage have been widely pursued as offering the potential to dramatically decrease the morbidity and mortality associated with metastasis. Since epithelial cancers and precursor lesions are frequently focal and can be distributed heterogeneously across a wide field, a sensitive diagnosis is extremely demanding. A diagnosis should be rendered on the size scale of a single cell in a field comprising possibly more than a billion cells.
Epithelial cancer also presents challenges for therapy. Since they are superficial, access to epithelial lesions can frequently be obtained through the use of minimally invasive catheters or endoscope. The therapeutic challenge, however, is in comprehensively killing, resecting or ablating the entire lesion without damage to underlying or adjacent tissues. This is particularly challenging since the depth of disease and even the thickness of normal epithelial layers can vary substantially. Additionally, epithelial tissues are highly compliant and therapeutic instrumentation can result in significant compression. As a result, therapies designed to affect tissue to a fixed depth risk either under-treatment resulting in recurrence, or over-treatment that can lead to significant complications.
Barrett's Esophagus
The importance of Barrett's esophagus (BE) is based primarily on the prevalence of this disease, the rapid increase in its incidence, and the dismal prognosis for patients with high-grade dysplasia and adenocarcinoma as described in publication 1 identified below. The current consensus (as described in publications 2 and 3 identified below) holds that comprehensive destruction of BE in a controlled fashion, along with anti-reflux treatment, results in squamous regrowth and that continued reflux control prevents the return of BE. The challenge is in achieving comprehensive removal of the pathologic mucosa, while preserving the underlying tissues of the esophageal wall. Treatment that is incomplete can result in a squamous overgrowth that masks underlying pathology. Overly aggressive therapy can result in stricture or perforation of the esophageal wall. Provided below is the information relating to screening and therapy of BE.
Screening
Several approaches for esophageal screening in the management of BE have been investigated. Brush cytology (as described in publications 4 and 5 identified below) and the use of biological markers, such as the deletion and/or mutation of the 17p (p53) gene, (as described in publications 6 and 7 identified below) can be used independently of endoscopy but cannot provide spatial mapping of disease. High magnification video endoscopy (as described in publication 8 identified below), fluorescence spectroscopy (as described in publications 9 identified below), and light-scattering spectroscopy (as described in publications 10 identified below) each show promise for point diagnoses, but provide insufficient information regarding subsurface microstructure and have not been demonstrated for wide-field screening. High-resolution endoscopic ultrasound and chromoendoscopy (as described in publications 11 and 12 identified below, respectively) can both be applied to a wide field, but have suffered from low sensitivity and specificity.
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) system, methods and techniques (as described in publications 13 and 14 identified below) has been developed. Certain accurate OCT diagnostic criteria have been developed for specialized intestinal metaplasia, dysplasia and adenocarcinoma, as described in International Patent Application PCT/US2004/029148, filed Sep. 8, 2004, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/501,276, filed Jul. 9, 2004, and publications 15-17 identified below. For example, advances in OCT technology have occurred demonstrating that the acquisition of an OCT signal in the wavelength domain (as opposed to the time domain) can provide orders of magnitude improvement in imaging speed while maintaining excellent image quality, as described in publications 18-20 identified below. One such exemplary second-generation imaging technology has been developed, e.g., optical frequency domain imaging (OFDI), as described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/266,779, filed Nov. 2, 2005 and publication 21 identified below. With OFDI methods, techniques and systems, high-resolution ranging can be conducted in a tissue by detecting spectrally-resolved interference between the tissue sample and a reference while the source wavelength is tuned. (See, e.g., publication 22 identified below). Currently, OFDI methods, techniques and systems may be capable of capturing (e.g., 10 μm) 3 voxels at rates of approximately 40 million per second and the imaging speeds may likely be more than double in the near future, as provided in publication 23 identified below. Additionally, phase-sensitive OFDI methods, techniques and systems has been used for imaging flow, as provided in publication 24 identified below.
Controllable Therapy
Certain endoluminal approaches have been evaluated for the treatment of SIM (with and without dysplasia), including photodynamic therapy (PDT) (as provided in reference 25 identified below), laser (532 nm and 1064 nm) (as provided in reference 26 identified below), multipolar electrocoagulation (as provided in reference 27 identified below), argon plasma coagulation (as provided in reference 28 identified below), endoscopic mucosal resection (as provided in reference 29 identified below), radiofrequency ablation (as provided in reference 30 identified below) and cryoablation (as provided in reference 31 identified below) using liquid nitrogen. Although each of these techniques appear to be successful, most studies describe non-uniform therapy that can potentially result in persistent SIM or excessively deep ablation, resulting in stricture or perforation. In a study of over 100 patients, PDT may result in a stricture rate of 30% for single treatments and 50% for more than one treatment (as provided in reference 32 identified below). An exemplary reason for failure is not entirely clear but possible contributing causes include the operator-dependent nature of many of these hand-held, hand-aimed devices, the large surface area that requires treatment and the inherent preference for a physician-determined visual end point for the treatment (as provided in references 3 and 30 identified below). Additionally, a high variability may exist in the thickness of mucosal layers within and between patients and have directly observed significant compression of the soft tissues of the esophagus. The prior therapeutic approaches, however, do not account for the variability of layer thickness or compressibility of the esophageal wall.
Accordingly, there is a need to overcome the deficiencies described herein above.